“It won’t happen again.” Qin Peiran walked closer, took the paper bag Lou Fan handed over, glanced at the box inside, and said, “Thank you.” Then she turned and walked into the second bedroom.
Lou Fan was certain that Qin Peiran had hardly looked at her at all tonight.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket, and Lou Fan pulled it out. It was a message from You Ye.
You Ye: [Home yet? Is your college student happy to see her phone? Did she give you a loving kiss?]
Lou Fan: [Love you, get lost.]
Lou Fan: [I told you there’s really nothing between us. The kid is ten years younger than me. Besides, she probably has a partner, coming home early and leaving late every day, so stop talking nonsense.]
Lou Fan: [She was pretty calm, just said thank you and went into her room.]
You Ye: [She only said thank you, no other reaction? You’re getting a really raw deal out of this transaction.]
Lou Fan: [I wanted to buy the phone, and taking care of her tuition and living expenses is my choice too. I didn’t expect her to pay me back with anything.]
You Ye: [Forget the rest, at least the emotional value should be maximized.]
The screen showed typing for a long time. After Lou Fan stared at it for a while, You Ye finally sent: [Fine, as long as you’re happy. Remember to look for me if you want to cry, scream, or hang yourself.]
Thinking back to her previous life, You Ye had been just like this, terrified that she wouldn’t be able to think straight, clumsily carrying a pack of canned beer to find her. Lou Fan couldn’t help laughing out loud.
Tapping lightly on the screen, Lou Fan typed out a line and sent it:
[Deal, remember to bring the beer.]
Monday. Just as the morning classes ended, students rushing toward the cafeteria poured out of the teaching building in a steady stream.
Qin Peiran was one of them.
She lagged behind the crowd, her pace unhurried. Unlike the others who formed groups of two or three, she only kept her head down, tapping messages on her phone, looking at them, failing to send them, and deleting them instead.
“Hey, look, is that her? It is, right?”
“It is. Seems her name is Qin somethingran?”
“Qin Peiran. Hey, how much do you think she earns in a month?”
“Quite a bit, probably. Otherwise, who would want to. Hey, look at the phone in her hand, could it be?”
“Duh, obviously it is. Otherwise, how could someone who couldn’t even afford tuition afford to buy it?”
Though the surroundings were noisy and bustling, Qin Peiran still caught those gossiping voices. She frowned, trying to glean some information from their faces, but the moment she raised her head, those people merged back into the crowd, lowering their heads and falling silent.
Qin Peiran glanced at her phone, shoved it into her pocket, and ignored it.
Anyway, she had never cared about the gossip in this world.
Ahead was the main thoroughfare of the school with the highest foot traffic. There were a few table tennis tables by the roadside, and a long row of campus bulletin boards lined the green belt.
Today’s bulletin boards seemed livelier than usual. From afar, Qin Peiran saw a dense crowd gathered there, blocking the path completely.
She followed the crowd and walked slowly forward.
“Yo yo yo, isn’t this Qin Peiran?” Lu Wang stood next to the bulletin board, one hand gripping a red pillar while leaning his body against it, waving his other hand toward Qin Peiran’s direction. “The campus big star.”
Lu Wang’s voice attracted the gazes of everyone around. Qin Peiran stopped in her tracks.
The crowd automatically parted a path for her, leading to the display board at the end. Qin Peiran shot Lu Wang a cold glance and walked over.
The color-printed images weren’t very clear, but it was still possible to tell they were taken in the back seat of a car. Two women were sitting very close together, and one of them was kissing the tip of the other’s nose.
They were unmistakably Lou Fan and Qin Peiran.
In just an instant, Qin Peiran knew where those photos had come from.
She looked at Lu Wang, her gaze sharp, as if coated with a layer of frost.
Aside from the series of photos in the back seat, Lu Wang had even posted Lou Fan’s close-up portrait. Along with her name, he had thoughtfully written down her company name and birth date. Even though Qin Peiran had already walked up to the spot, gossipy onlookers were still whispering among themselves:
“Twenty-eight, so old.”
“You’re an idiot. Someone picked up from outside, definitely old.”
“Still, the photos look pretty good, looks like she’s just in her early twenties.”
“Photoshopped probably, maybe her face is full of wrinkles in real life. I’m telling you, the last time my grandma used a Douyin filter to take a picture, it made her look eighteen, I’m not lying to you.”
“Do you guys think if this gets posted online or sent to Auntie Lou’s company, she’ll get fired?”
“Auntie Lou, hahahaha, you’re so vicious.”
Qin Peiran listened with lowered eyes, cracked her knuckles, and slowly lifted her eyelids.
The few people who had been gossiping instantly went silent.
She walked a bit closer to the bulletin board.
Many of the surrounding people were just there to watch the show. They had secretly anticipated Qin Peiran becoming the ultimate spark, feeling the gunpowder pile up inside their chests like suffocation, just waiting for a firecracker to ignite it all.
Yet Qin Peiran looked exceptionally cold. It wasn’t a sense of detachment, but rather as if her eyes had frozen into sharp ice blades, ruthlessly dissecting everyone she looked at.
Finally, she stood beneath the bulletin board and raised her eyes toward Lu Wang. “You did this?”
“Yeah, so what? You have the nerve to be kept by someone on the outside, and I don’t have the guts to admit it?”
Qin Peiran raised her hand, peeled off those A4 sheets piece by piece, and crumpled them into a ball.
“Come here.”
“What?” Lu Wang’s thick, stubby eyebrows knitted together, not daring to meet Qin Peiran’s gaze.
It wasn’t that he was scared. As a grown man, how could he be afraid of a woman? Lu Wang thought this to himself, yet he still involuntarily shrank back a bit.
So, he found an excuse for himself: the other party had nothing to lose since she was barefoot, while he, Lu Wang, was a respectable person and naturally feared some lesbian kept by an older woman going crazy on him.
“Scared?” Qin Peiran didn’t give him more time, tossed the paper ball in her hand, and walked over.
“Are you do?” Before the rest of the words could escape his mouth, a loud smack of flesh tearing through the air drew the gaze of everyone around.
During a lunch break that should have been noisy, only the broadcast speaker blared abruptly and loudly.
One second, two seconds.
The crowd finally began to stir, sounding like cicadas rubbing their wings in the trees, or withered leaves falling onto the concrete pavement, rustling and driven by the autumn wind.
Lu Wang’s entire face turned pale, making the bright red handprint even more glaring.
Someone hiding in the crowd laughed softly and whispered “serves you right,” causing the students clustered here to start echoing one another.
“What business is it of his who she dates?”
“This is a dashcam perspective, right? So disgusting. It looks just like a peeping tom.”
“So what if she has a wealthy girlfriend? Is he just sour because he can’t get any?”
“Must be. Hey, didn’t you know? When school first started, Lu Wang wanted to chase Qin Peiran, but she didn’t even pay attention to him.”
“I think this elder sister is so pretty. Could that Lu Wang be a toad wanting to eat swan meat, but didn’t get any and ended up flying into a rage from humiliation?”
The gossiping voices gradually shifted toward Lu Wang. He looked like he had accumulated a desperate surge of courage, or perhaps he was blinded by sudden fury. His face flushed completely red, his neck purple with strain, and he raised a fist to smash it directly toward Qin Peiran’s face.
As he cursed with filthy, cheap profanity, Qin Peiran cast him a disdainful glance.
“Is that all you can do besides this?” Qin Peiran had been a child without anyone to look after her since she was young, and she had experienced plenty of bullying. Lu Wang didn’t even rank on her radar. That swinging fist looked both slow and weak to her. She blocked it with her palm, frowning in disgust at the tactile sensation that was thoroughly unpleasant.
The next second, Qin Peiran hurled him against the bulletin board. Half of Lu Wang’s heel landed on the curb, and losing his center of gravity, he collapsed abruptly. The sound of flesh hitting the ground was shockingly loud, while his foul mouth, spraying spittle everywhere, continued to babble incessantly.
“No dad to teach, no mom to raise, you’re only fit to serve an old freak.”
Qin Peiran didn’t let him finish. Clenching the paper ball in her hand, she hurled it with precise, ruthless, and fierce force straight down Lu Wang’s throat.
“Cough, cough, cough. Cough!” Lu Wang was right in the middle of talking with his mouth wide open, and the ball of paper was accidentally swallowed by him, getting stuck right in his windpipe. Unable to draw a breath or cough it out, his entire face turned purple.
Qin Peiran cast a downward glance and walked away as if nothing had happened.
Someone who seemed afraid of trouble stepped forward. Chaos broke out behind Qin Peiran, but she didn’t pay much attention because she planned to have the rice bowl at the third-floor cafeteria for lunch today, and if she went too late, the auntie there would start washing the pots.
After the peak cafeteria rush had passed, Qin Peiran calmly carried her food to a corner seat. Before eating, she instinctively took out her phone.
An unexpected message made her chuckle.
“Figures.”
Qin Peiran put away her smile, revealing her cold and sharp facial features entirely. Slipping her phone into her pocket, she glanced out the window and slowly spat out a single word: “Idiot.”
Saturday arrived quickly, and Lu Wang did indeed keep his word, at least for this week, as he hadn’t come to look for trouble in front of Qin Peiran.
The two sides aligned their accounts and made a private settlement. Aside from a verbal warning from the school, nothing more was said.
Of course, it was merely an on-campus settlement.
When Qin Peiran woke up, it was not yet seven o’clock. She glanced at her phone, turned off the alarm that hadn’t yet rung, washed up, and left the house.
Before leaving, she glanced at the master bedroom. The door was shut tightly, and she could even faintly hear Lou Fan’s steady breathing.
She hefted the backpack on her shoulders, confirmed that everything inside was in place, put on her sneakers, and went out.
The morning bus on Saturday had pitifully few people. A few old ladies holding large folding fans got off at the park, leaving Qin Peiran as the sole passenger on the entire bus.
The driver glanced in the rearview mirror and muttered to himself: The next stop is the terminal, the shipyard, a place abandoned several years ago. Starting next month, their route was going to cut this stop too. What is this young girl coming here for so early in the morning? Don’t tell me she’s going to do something foolish?
Feeling the gaze, Qin Peiran half-lifted her eyelids and looked over.
Her extreme impatience was unmasked. The driver averted his gaze, pretended nothing was wrong, drove forward for a distance, and steadily pressed the brake: “The shipyard has arrived.”
Qin Peiran shouldered her backpack and got off the bus without looking back.
The moment the bus doors closed, she heard someone seemingly speaking to her:
“Young lady, go home early.”